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Introducing Cloud Typography Webfonts by H&FJ

typography.com

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Re: Introducing Cloud Typography Webfonts by H&FJ

#41

Post by aclevername »

Take this with a grain of salt since I can't find the source, but I vividly remember a designer wanting to use a H&FJ typeface (Gotham) on a project I was working on about a year and a half ago, only to have the H&FJ FAQ state that they don't allow web embedding and aren't developing it for what amounted to aesthetic reasons (i.e., web font technology was not far enough along for them to feel comfortable with the display of their type on screen.)

Now, instead, they're using the same technology as just about everyone else, under their own service, and just rehinted their typefaces to match the tech.

Re: Introducing Cloud Typography Webfonts by H&FJ

#42

Post by zeitg3ist »

aclevername wrote: post #41

Take this with a grain of salt since I can't find the source, but I vividly remember a designer wanting to use a H&FJ typeface (Gotham) on a project I was working on about a year and a half ago, only to have the H&FJ FAQ state that they don't allow web embedding and aren't developing it for what amounted to aesthetic reasons (i.e., web font technology was not far enough along for them to feel comfortable with the dis…

Actually the service itself launched as a private beta in early 2012 [1], while on the H&JF FAQ there has been a "work in progress" statement since at least 2011 [2].

[1] http://kottke.org/12/03/kottkeorg-redesign-2012-version

[2] http://web.archive.org/web/20110707053012/http://www.typogra...

Re: Introducing Cloud Typography Webfonts by H&FJ

#43

Post by tptacek »

eps wrote: post #37
tptacek wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of the major foundries are OK with you embedding fonts into web pages by publishing their fonts as resources on the web, there to be downloaded by anyone else who wants to compose documents with those fonts.

This is incorrect. Adobe would be one example and there are quite a few others.

What are the Adobe fonts you're thinking of that are licensed for embedding on websites?

Re: Introducing Cloud Typography Webfonts by H&FJ

#44

Post by Anonymous238 »

publicfig wrote: post #3

Price wise, this is quite a bit less than I was expecting, especially considering that you get 5 free with subscription. Now just to wait and see how long it is before every site is using Gotham.

I run a couple of sites that generate 2 million page views a day. Using their prices, I'll be spending more on font subscriptions than the two dedicated servers I'm running. It's a pass here. I'd gladly pay maybe $50/yr to get permission to use their fonts, and a nice interface to preview, browse and generate the fonts I'd like to include. However, if they think I'm going to spend $700+ per month to include three or four webfonts on my site, they're out of their mind. There are countless similar webfonts available for free, and the difference in quality is not nearly worth the price to me, or my users. I think they need a new approach and pricing structure.

Re: Introducing Cloud Typography Webfonts by H&FJ

#45

Post by stephth »

grey-area wrote: post #26
tptacek wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of the major foundries are OK with you embedding fonts into web pages by publishing their fonts as resources on the web, there to be downloaded by anyone else who wants to compose documents with those fonts.

FontShop do supply 13000 fonts for upload to servers, among them FF meta, FF Din etc, so some quite well-known and well-used fonts: http://www.fontshop.com/fonts/webfonts/ I suspect other foundries will follow them eventually, because competition from things like Google Web fonts and younger typographers is going to make it very difficult to justify refusing to allow use on the web without a subscription and reliance…

MyFonts does too. 83k web fonts according to:

http://www.myfonts.com/info/webfonts/

Re: Introducing Cloud Typography Webfonts by H&FJ

#46

Post by mortenjorck »

muglug wrote: post #8
bbrunner wrote: post #5

What makes this different from typekit? It's quite a bit more expensive ($99 for 250,000 pageviews on cloud.typography vs $49 for 500,000 on typekit) and I'm wondering what extras it provides.

Hoefler & Frere-Jones typefaces. Their typography foundry is held to be second-to-none among typeface quality and frequency of usage in print and elsewhere. In particular, their typeface Gotham is incredibly popular, and making it available as a webfont publicly is a big deal. Also, this effort has been underway for at least three years. Their attention to detail ensures that these webfonts are going to be some of th…

An analogy might be that Typekit is the Netflix of typography, while H&FJ are the HBO of the market. Gotham is Game of Thrones. And this move is the typographic equivalent of making HBO Go available as a standalone subscription.

Re: Introducing Cloud Typography Webfonts by H&FJ

#47

Post by praxeologist »

mkehrt wrote: post #30
Historiopode wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems to me that downloading a subset of a typeface from a webpage would be less practical than downloading an entire collection from a torrent. Concerning the service itself: according to their product page, H&FJ requires you to include a remote stylesheet rather than javascript. I would say this is the "minimum viable evil" if you are striving to centralize distribution of your webfonts; while annoying, there ar…

I may or may not have had no trouble whatsoever pirating an enormous variety of fonts off a website I found with a quick google search. Maybe torrents just aren't where they are?

In my experience too, websites with direct downloads are better. It is easy to make webfonts even when FontSquirrel marks the font for copyright too if you have a software like FontLab. Just remove the designer/copyright information in the Font Info menu.

Re: Introducing Cloud Typography Webfonts by H&FJ

#48

Post by jrochkind1 »

Silhouette wrote: post #39
larrywright wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There really aren't. H&FJ make some of the best typefaces out there.

H&FJ make some of the best typefaces out there. So do Adobe, and Ascender, and other professional foundries, and several of their font families are available completely free. Despite all the praise for H&FJ's quality from some posters here, I've got Photoshop and a 400% zoom that says their screen fonts still have to fit on the same limited number of pixels as everyone else's, and inevitably, the pixels that get turn…

Maybe, but i'm excited by http://www.typography.com/cloud/the-fonts/, where they mention that all their fonts have: real small caps; old-style (text) figures; full range of individually drawn (not interpolated) weights; ligatures; even some old-style non-lining symbols like dollar signs.

If there are free web fonts that have all those, they are hard to find. (I don't even know how to use old-style figures ordinarily, although I'm not an expert in these things. But they imply that they have some custom (probably hacky cause that's what it would take) solution to some special glyphs "Cloud-typography includes tools for implementing advanced typographic features, and delivering them even to browsers that aren't designed to support advanced typography"; )

But yeah, clearly the market is people who care about things like in that list. Some of which are _very_ rarely seen on the web right now; if this leads to them being seen on the web more, it may increase the number of people who know what a 'non-lining figure' is, and then increase the market of people who want such things. And hopefully increase the number of free fonts that have em too (although you can have all those features and still be a poorly-designed font), as well as lead to actual standard ways to do things like text figures on the web.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Text_figures

Re: Introducing Cloud Typography Webfonts by H&FJ

#49

Post by grey-area »

stephth wrote: post #45
grey-area wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FontShop do supply 13000 fonts for upload to servers, among them FF meta, FF Din etc, so some quite well-known and well-used fonts: http://www.fontshop.com/fonts/webfonts/ I suspect other foundries will follow them eventually, because competition from things like Google Web fonts and younger typographers is going to make it very difficult to justify refusing to allow use on the web without a subscription and reliance…

MyFonts does too. 83k web fonts according to: http://www.myfonts.com/info/webfonts/

Yes though to be fair most of the older established foundries do not yet offer web fonts. It'll be interesting to see how this plays out, but as a designer I'd be hesitant to recommend signing up to any 'cloud' service like this to a client, because they're then at the mercy of that provider, who may suddenly decide to up rates year after year for the font which is central to their brand. This is what scares me about the Adobe cloud too - the terms right now are quite reasonable, but when Adobe needs to squeeze more money from customers, those renting software will have no choice but to pay out the new rates, whatever they may be. I see why this is attractive for foundries, Adobe etc, but I don't see the attraction for customers.

I much prefer paying once for a font and then using it indefinitely, and I'd prefer to compensate a type designer directly for that, instead of paying a foundry. So to me a model where you buy a copy of the font direct from the designer would be more attractive.

Re: Introducing Cloud Typography Webfonts by H&FJ

#50

Post by eps »

tptacek wrote: post #43
eps wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is incorrect. Adobe would be one example and there are quite a few others.

What are the Adobe fonts you're thinking of that are licensed for embedding on websites?

I'll take it back. I was thinking of their general font EULA that comes with the Type Collections and it is very liberal when it comes to web-embedding. It's permissive of Cufon and others, but not @font-face.
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